IV.

lems for him. There were no two

Margaret was pleading for His Obesity. She had said she coveted him, so Gerard was for taking him home. The idol was wise and friendly. It looked as if it had known they would come as if it had known everything, while they knew nothing. It had I waited at the summit of the peak to preside at their wooing; it marked the beginning of their era. Clearly it was destined to be their totem, their phylactery, to smile enigmatically on the world from their door wherever they moved house or pitched camp. It was dearer to Margaret than precious stones, but she would not take it. But Gerard overbore her. He would see the headman of the village the next day. He would take his orderly with him; he would easily make it all right. If folk could be discovered with any proprietary rights in the image he would find a way to square them. He would give them a gilded image of Shiv if they wished, or a feast, or a sacrifice to any god they liked. It was not likely they would refuse; if they did he could replace the bogie on the cairn.

Gerard knew nothing of the subtle Hindu. He was at home with his own Tiwanas and Derajats, big-boned, hardbitten men who rode like the devil and howled as they lowered their lances. These good fellows had no scruples or sentiments which did not concern their izzat (honor) or their womenkind. Gerard was a great Bahadur among them, and he was used to having his own way. They respected him for it, and took care that prejudices which they did not share should not interfere with his comfort. He would have been scandalized sometimes if he had known how they contrived to make things smooth. In such a milieu it was not strange that the East had few prob

wanted her dear bogie; she should have it, and it was his business to arrange that she possessed it in peace of mind. So he rode home with His Obesity under his arm.

"We'll go to the village to-morrow," he said, "and explore the shrine at the same time. I'll take Ghazi Khan."

But they had been seen. A herdswoman followed them distraught along the road to Gerkal, until she was outdistanced by their horses.

In the evening Margaret was ill at

ease.

"Gerard, dear," she said, "I wish we hadn't taken it."

"Ter-res-sit-ta mi-a," he said, dwelling on each honeyed syllable as if he loved speech and were about to be deprived of it for ever, "we'll take it back to-morrow and leave it there if the people won't give it us willingly."

"Shall I sing you a Spanish song?" Gerard was forgiven. When Margaret sang he felt as if the marrow in his bones were melting. He was afraid that if he did not bite his lips hard and try to think about something else he would weep like a child. Only once had he known the same exaltation, it was among the thunder of hoofs and cries of his Derajats when he rode at the head of his men to charge a position over the Malakand.

Mrs. Chicester joined them. She called them both mad people, but when Gerard had gone she said he was a dear.

"I feel dreadfully responsible," she said. "But I suppose a man who keeps six polo ponies can support a wife. Do you know he is the best Number Two in the Punjab?"

During the night His Obesity fell from his shelf, like Dagon, but with less disaster to himself. Margaret heard the fall and the crash of her hostess's china.

She put on her dress

ing-gown and found the god lying with a smile more sardonic than benign amidst the ruins on the floor. She Blackwood's Magazine.

wrapped him up in homely brown paper and laid him tenderly on the sofa out of mischief's way.

Edmund Candler.

When the exaggerated and ridiculous rumors of a wide-spread revolution in Spain first reached Paris, there were those who predicted an immediate fall of the Monarchy. Correspondents, stopped from entering Spain, encamped at Cerbère, and fed their journals with wild stories of a successful revolution, which had swept Catalonia and held Barcelona in the throes of a bloody struggle. The interruption of train service and the cutting of the telegraph wires gave credence to their reports. I was asked to go to Barcelona to get the real facts, and afterwards to make a tour of the reported storm-centres in Catalonia. So I went from Marseilles to Barcelona in a specially-chartered steamer (the regular services were cancelled), took my news by sea to Port Vendres, where was the nearest French telegraph office, and then returned overland into the province of Gerona. Both in the interior and on the coast I visited a number of cities from which trouble had been reported, and gradually worked my way back to Barcelona by train and carriage. investigation was, of necessity, a hasty one. But it had the merit of being made immediately following "the most sorrowful week," as the last week in July is feelingly called by the Catalan Press. I had an opportunity of interviewing alcaldes, military officials, business men, and Republican and Carlist leaders.

My

While the smoke was still rising from the burned convents and churches of Barcelona, I had sent a message to my newspaper, which might be sum

marized briefly as follows: The revolutionary movement, developing suddenly from an anti-war demonstration, had at first the universal sympathy of all classes, even to the point of armed resistance; but the anarchistic tendencies of the mob, which resulted in deplorable excesses, alienated the better elements. They withdrew, and the movement collapsed. A trip through upper Catalonia, and a second visit to Barcelona, confirmed this judgment, more tersely expressed by an earnest and conservative propagandist thus: "The anarchists have spoiled everything."

Within a week after the sensational headlines of many journals had announced a widespread revolution and the imminent overthrow of the dynasty, the real truth began to appear. As a matter of fact, there had been no revolution in Spain, nor had one been seriously contemplated. The outbreaks were confined to Barcelona and a few other cities and villages of Catalonia, such as Sabadell, Mataro, Badalona, Anglés, San Felíu Guixols, and Palamos. Sabadell had been the only interior point where it had been at all serious. The other centres were coast cities, whose disorderly uprisings were doomed to speedy suppression upon the arrival of troops by sea. Outside of Barcelona and its suburbs, where, perhaps, three hundred were killed and seven or eight hundred wounded, there was little, if any, resistance to the military.

I want to note here that the Press exaggerations are chargeable to the

stupidity of the military censorship, for whose existence and methods there was absolutely no reason. Although the telegraph wires were cut and the mails arrested, an English cable from Barcelona to Marseilles was always working. Had the Captain-General allowed properly accredited correspondents to send out the exact truth, day by day, the Catalan troubles would have been a four days' sensation promptly superseded by aviation or some more important interest. Will censors never learn that their severity generally defeats the very end they are endeavoring to serve? The world of to-day must have news. In serving their clientéle newspapers much prefer to set forth facts, but if facts are not forthcoming, rumors must needs be "played up," no matter how slight the foundation for them.

In spite of their exaggeration, the Catalan troubles have their import, and their lessons are not only for Spain, but for the world at large. Two of these lessons are so broad in their scope and bear so directly upon society that I propose to discuss them briefly, in a suggestive rather than conclusive way. The field they open is very great.

I.

The Catalans of all classes have strong Republican sympathies, nurtured by bad government; but a distaste for lawlessness and a desire for industrial and commercial prosperity are influences powerful enough to prevent the advancement of a political propaganda by an appeal to

arms.

Barcelona is the most important city of Spain, and, by its manufacturing and shipping interests, ranks among the great cities of the world. The whole of Catalonia follows worthily the lead of its metropolis. It is a rich country, inhabited by enterprising, sober, industrious people, not without education, and possessing in some re

spects characteristics which are more Anglo-Saxon than Spanish or French. Brought by ties of blood, by propinquity, and by commerce, into closer relationship with France than with the kingdom of which they form a part, they have inherent Republican tendencies, and, from the pinnacle of their industrial well-being, have regarded with little patience the pitiful incapacity of their Government, as contrasted with that of their close neighbor. The success of the third Republican France has made Catalonia envious. The unhappy struggles in Cuba, followed by the American war with its attendant loss of colonies and navy, affected Catalonia deeply. The law allowing redemption from military service, so fatal to the esprit de corps of Spain's army, offends the Catalan sense of justice and democratic instinct. The Ship Subsidy Bill and other recent legislation or lack of it, e.g., the admission of the expelled French religious orders without proper restrictions or conditions, has awakened Catalonia's resentment.

So much in brief for the causes which have fostered Republicanism and hostility to the Government and to the army. One has but to study the election returns in Catalonia for the past decade to note the rapid growth and universal prevalence of Republicanism. It is not difficult to discover it among the wealthy and influential men of a community. Ask them, and they confess their political creed with perfect candor. Its existence among local officials is shown by their compromising attitude in the face of the uprisings in many places. That it is believed to permeate the locally-recruited military is attested by the fact that during the first two days of the Barcelona troubles the CaptainGeneral's failure to prevent the erection of barricades and the burning of churches and convents is explainable

only on the ground of his having no confidence in his men. These soldiers were also cheered to the echo by the mobs. But the tremendous force of the sentiment was demonstrated beyond doubt when barricades were raised in all quarters of the city with cheers and willing aid, and the first defence of those barricades was by no means limited to the low and vicious elements. Certainly, at the beginning, all Barcelona was compromised.

If rampant anarchism and vandalism had not displayed itself so rapidly and irresistibly among the lower classes, the Government would have found a serious task upon its hands in quelling a revolt which had evidently behind it the good wishes of the mass of Barcelonans. As soon as this tendency gained the ascendant, however, the decent Republicans abandoned the cause. There was not the slightest hesitation in this desertion. It was immediate and decisive. By burning convents and churches, by threatening factories, by blackmailing, by displaying a wild and vicious conception of “liberty," the mobs everywhere sounded their deathknell and passed conclusve judgment on their cause. It was all over, the incipient revolution, from that moment.

The last week of July in Barcelona revealed a spirit of Republicanism. But it revealed, at the same time, the glorious fact with which the propagandist of the present day must reckon, with which the hot-headed dreamer of the continental boulevard café, who vainly believes that history will repeat itself, must cool his ardor, namely, that modern civilization will not tolerate lawlessness, nor suffer its industrial and commercial prosperity to be retarded or weakened for any cause whatsoever. I use the term modern civilization as a personification of the great mass of all classes in every country where the light of popular education has thrown its beneficent rays.

Barcelona, and some other Catalan cities, were deceived, but only momentarily. The awakening was immediate and tremendous! Change the Government? Well, yes, we want nothing better than a reformed or even a new Government. But if it is going to involve lawlessness, and the injury of our business, the security of our property, the interruption of our commerce, no! Thus reasoned half a million people in the city of Barcelona, and their fiat ended the "revolution."

I was the first person to enter Palamos after the ignominious fall of the "Republic" there. A prominent business man, in describing the reign of terror which had lasted six days, ended with these significant words: "I have been a Republican for many years: I am still. For I believe in a Republican form of government, and I hope we shall have it some day. Before last week I confess that I even looked favorably upon a revolution. But God knows that if all which happened here is co-incident with getting a Republic, why, I'll stick to Alfonso XIII" In different places I recorded similar sentiments from men in all walks of life.

We do not want to, nor could we if we wished, get away from the happy fact that education and the rapprochement of nations, and different parts of the same nation, through increased and better means of transportation, and through the present-day intricacy and wide range of investments and business interests, are irresistible peacemaking factors, destined to put an end to internal and international wars. The cause of the collapse of the Catalan troubles is of world interest, for almost everywhere in Europe, under similar circumstances, there would be a similar outcome.

II.

The sudden development of the movement along the lines of lawlessness dem

onstrated, at the same moment, the strong hold of anarchistic principles upon the uneducated working-classes, and the impotence of anarchism to withstand the forces of law and order, when once exerted.

For many years Barcelona has been noted as a centre of anarchism, and its inhabitants have held a justly-earned reputation for excesses. The bombthrowing is still recent history. Inflammatory journals, which the Government ought long ago to have suppressed, have been circulating assiduously throughout Catalonia, and have poisoned the minds of uneducated people. The anti-clerical propaganda found fruit, the moment the restraint of civil authority was removed, in the wholesale burning of monastic and conventual establishments, and even of churches, in the desecration of tombs, and in the unspeakable mutilation of some priests and religious. Threats were made to destroy factories and loot banks. In one city the municipal buildings were burned. The blatant anarchy of a mob, drunken through temporary success, is shown by the people of Palamos, who, despite the protests and pleadings of a respectable Republican Junta, made a round of their employers, and threatened to blow up their homes if money were not forthcoming.

But there is no cohesive power, no readiness to die for principle, in anarchism. The solitary instances where an anarchist dies with his bomb are those of desperate Ishmaels, who would otherwise have dropped off the bridge into the river. Concerted anarchism is never found except in a mob, where each man's daring is behind the shelter of another's body, and whose only power is in lack of opposition to its actions.

Mob psychology is the same to-day as it ever was, the same in Spain as in Turkey, or Italy, or France, or Eng

land, or America. I made a careful examination of the barricades in Barcelona. They were admirably constructed at strategic points, and, if defended, could only have been taken after much loss of life. But they were to witness no such desperate struggles as have always bathed a Paris barricade in blood. They were not taken because of the lack of fire-arms or the concentration against them of overwhelming forces. Nor were they the scene, as some journals reported, of gruesome slaughter. The Republican element, redoubtable and capable of resisting, had deserted them in disgust. Then, when the military trained artillery upon them, the anarchists scurried to their holes like rats. The "revolution" had collapsed.

It was the same story everywhere else. A column entered Sabadell without resistance. Badalona struck its colors upon the arrival of a gunboat. At Palamos, where terror had really reigned for six days, where the Spanish flag had been hauled down and the birth of a new régime joyously celebrated by debauches and blackmail, backed by dynamite, the death of the "Republic" was ludicrous. The exultant populace, not even waiting for the landing of troops, immediately ceased their carousings and shut themselves up in their houses. Not the slightest resistance was made, not a sound uttered, when a small detachment of soldiers, guns in hand, went through the narrow streets of the city, arresting the ringleaders in their houses. It was a bulletless and sabreless conquest of the formidable "terrorists." Three days later I saw the batch of forty or fifty prisoners leaving Palamos for a military prison in the interior, under guard of six soldiers. The factories were working, the longshoremen were busy unloading vessels. A mere half-dozen old women, wailing and wringing their hands, saw the pris